This is a very specific bug symptom so please only post here if you see all of the below in your game.
There are many similar issues, so this should be kept to this issue only.
This can either b...
Ideas
this happens occasionally in TS since the time of TS1 and I've always dealt with it by clicking "save", it takes a long time to save but in most cases it resumes normally, but it doesn't work every time.
Maybe I was just not patient enough with it (typically takes less than a minute to save my game in every other household), but it never saved for me, just got stuck and I had to force through the task manager because alt+f4 also didn't bring up the "do you want to save before quitting" message that it will sometimes.